How Kim Garth crossed – and conquered – the world

It was some years back now that a young Dubliner took her first bold steps on a new cricketing adventure. She was excited, and a little nervous. Competitive, and capable. She was confident, too, even if she wasn't yet convinced she was entitled to measure herself against the best.

And so she boarded a plane to Australia, a world unknown.

"It was very, very exciting," she says today. "I'll never forget it."

Her name was Anne-Marie McDonald.

* * *

In an outdoor café tucked between the two grandstands at Allan Border Field, a relaxed Kim Garth fiddles with the straw in her iced coffee. A Cricket Australia backpack rests at her feet, and she wears a look of polite curiosity on her face. She isn't yet thinking about how in the next few weeks she will make cricket history – but she is thinking about the past. And the future. She knows she is supposed to be keeping her focus fixed somewhere between those two lines – that the best thing a sportsperson can do is stay in the present – but sometimes, well, that can be hard.

Garth was back at Sandymount, home of Pembroke Cricket Club in south Dublin, just a few months ago. It was near enough to her second home as a child, and the effect of the recent visit lingers. She is wistful.

"The long weekend in May is always a really nice weekend in Ireland," she says. "My little brother was playing in the first team, and so I went down there, and the sun was shining, and pretty much everyone that I grew up playing with was down there.

"It has a real community feel to it, club cricket back home. It's very social. All those guys you grew up playing cricket with, and girls you played women's cricket with – just having them down at the club … yeah, when I left, I was like, 'I really miss that'."

Garth is all about Australia now (even her accent reveals as much), and winning every trophy she possibly can. Next month she will fly to India, hoping to play her part in the defence of a crown. And Australia will be relying on her; the 29-year-old pace-bowling allrounder who has, quite remarkably, catapulted herself from the tiny cricket world of Dublin into the best XI of the most dominant team on the planet.

There are layers here that bear exploring. Of history, and of family. Of never letting up, and of never quite letting go. But for Garth, right now, the most relevant context is this: more than 14 years after her international debut, she is about to play her first ODI World Cup.

"It's very, very exciting," she says. "Hopefully I can play a big role over there."

* * *

Anne-Marie Garth insists she doesn't speak to the media. A member of Ireland Women's 1988 World Cup squad – the country's first foray into a global cricket showpiece – and the mother of three fine cricketers, including Australia's Kim Garth, she would rather let others in her family provide the public commentary.

"I don't do any interviews – ever," she says. "I thought Kim would've known better."

But there's a trace of playfulness in her voice, and perhaps the fact her daughter has put her up to the task – or at least signed off on it – helps. Or maybe it's because she is central to this latest slice of history; it is believed she and Kim are about to become the first mother-daughter duo to have both appeared at an ODI World Cup.

Lately, too, Anne-Marie has been leaning more into the nostalgia of her playing days. The sport has been ever-present in her life even in the years since, courtesy of the exploits of her children. Yet with time she has come to better appreciate and contextualise her own cameo in the grander scheme.

"I still have my (Ireland World Cup) blazer hanging up in the wardrobe," she says. "I nearly threw that out one day, when we were moving house. Oh my God, what was I thinking? It means a lot now.

"It's funny – the older you get, the more you treasure these things."

She offers some background to further her explanation, illuminating both the chasm and the constants between then and now. 

"Cricket is a tiny sport in Ireland," she says. "It's a growing sport, but … people still say to me, 'Oh, you played hockey for Ireland, didn't you?' So way back then, it didn't seem like much of an achievement.

"But, as the years have gone on, and I get together with my girly friends, my cricket friends – oh! The reminiscing, the stories, everything becomes so much more important, and probably a bit embellished (laughs)."

Not that they necessarily need to be, because the facts are impressive enough: the Ireland squad of '88 were cricketing pioneers in their country. And at the time, with Anne-Marie playing for Pembroke CC, she was not only an Irish trailblazer but a Garth family trailblazer as well.

"It was so exciting," she says again. "I remember the whole (World Cup squad) selection process. I remember sitting in my home changerooms at Pembroke Cricket Club – these dirty old changerooms, I think it must've been the men's changerooms – and they were reading out the names. I was going, 'Oh my gosh', like, I never thought I'd be picked."

And just for a moment, she wasn't sure if she had been. As the squad was called out in alphabetical order, the name 'Anne-Marie McDonald' seemed to be mumbled into 'Annie Murray', who was next on the list.  

"And I was going, 'Am I picked? Am I not picked?'" she laughs now. "But it was fantastic. And I remember all the gear, the horrendous uniforms that we had – our casual gear was this floral two-piece and the whole team literally looked like a flower bed."

Other details are vivid, too. The raffles the squad held to raise funds for the trip Down Under. The 500 quid Anne-Marie received from her employers to help send her on her way. And then the heat in Perth, and a couple of the girls being – despite liberal applications of sunscreen – "burnt alive".

"The management were going mad," she laughs again, "before we'd ever played a match."

And on it went for the Irish women. An experience like no other. They were soundly beaten by Australia, New Zealand and England, and they twice beat the Netherlands. But results were immaterial. There is an assumption now that those earlier tournaments were played very much in the shadows – no television, no commercialism, no money. Anne-Marie understands the sentiment, but for her, the enduring friendships and the absolute sense of adventure still brings that World Cup vividly to life in her mind.

"No, it wasn't widely broadcast or anything like that," she says. "But the fact it was in Australia made it extra special for us. Flying to Australia – for a month, you know – that was the gravity of it. It was a World Cup, and World Cups are amazing."

* * *

As Anne-Marie made her way with Pembroke, just around the corner, Johnny Garth was doing much the same with local rivals YMCA. Johannesburg-born, Jonathan Digby Garth emigrated to Ireland aged 13 in 1978. A capable allrounder, he represented his adopted country four times against County opposition in the second half of the '80s, and was a rugby union player of some repute as well.

Fittingly, Johnny and Anne-Marie met through cricket – they were national team players at the same time. The pair married in 1990, and had a son, Rob, in December the following year. It put an end to Anne-Marie's playing days, but really, her time in cricket was only shifting gears. Kim arrived in April 1996, the day before Anne-Marie's 33rd birthday, and then JJ made it a full house in December 2000. Soon enough, all three kids were playing cricket.

"It was very organic," Johnny says of their early years in the game. "Anne-Marie and I loved the sport, and it was just a case of: 'Well, which club do we send the kids to?' YM(CA) were struggling with their youth section at that stage, so it was a natural thing to bring them to Pembroke. All of them were brought down from probably (age) five or six.

"We were never that pushy; we just wanted them to enjoy it more than be good. But they all showed an appetite for it, and just loved the game."

For many sporting families, it's a familiar story. Just as Ricky Ponting was immersed in the rough-and-tumble cricketing landscape of Mowbray in the 1980s, the Garth kids found themselves absorbing the game daily, albeit in the more relaxed surrounds of Sandymount.

"And kids get really long school holidays here during the summertime – they get June, July and August off," Johnny says. "So a lot of the kids are brought down to the club, they're left there almost for the day – I don't mean unattended – and there might be 15-20 kids in the nets, just playing with a stump and a tennis ball. That was really how it all started."

For the young Pembroke kids, gender ran a distant second to ability, and Kim quickly made herself known as one of the more naturally capable of the group. She joined all the boys' teams and held her own. Johnny can still see her as a kid, steaming in off the particularly long run-up she'd learned from watching big brother Rob.

"She always had quite a natural action," he says. "And it was just, you know, copying her brother, seeing stuff on telly, and taking it from there.

"Then at around the age of 12 or 13, I thought: She's going to be a good cricketer."

Word had zipped around the small world of Ireland cricket that Pembroke had another promising one. The club had already produced Andy Balbirnie and remains a proud developer of international talent to this day (Ireland reps Orla Prendergast, Josh Little, Lorcan Tucker, and Louise and Barry McCarthy all came through the club).

In July 2009, after playing for Leinster at local representative level, 13-year-old Garth was picked for not one but two Ireland underage squads: the U17s Women, and the U13s Boys.

Before the month was out, she was in the Netherlands, helping Ireland win the inaugural Women's European Under-17 Championship title. Garth opened the batting and bowling, and against the Dutch made a match-winning 93no across a 40-over innings to secure the title.

That same summer she joined her male contemporaries on a week-long tour of the UK, during which they played three matches.

"Mark Adair, who plays for Ireland now, is friends with my little brother (JJ), and he still jokes about how I took his spot," she laughs. "I remember when I went over, they went, 'Oh my god, they have a girl playing for them'. People couldn't really believe that. But my own teammates were great; I grew up as a six, seven, eight-year-old at (Pembroke), and everyone just treated me the same, which was really cool."

Johnny remembers Kim's experience with the Ireland U13s boys as something of a seminal moment.

"That's not happened since," he says of the selection. "Kim played in all of the games, and was arguably one of their better bowlers. She got a few wickets. She wasn't overly quick, and the 'keeper was good enough to stand up to her. But even then, she was skilful: she swung it away, and she generally didn't miss her lengths.

"From that age, I thought it was only really a matter of time before the Irish women came knocking – the player base is minute here in Ireland relative to what it is in Australia, for the women particularly."

Garth by then was sports mad. Her red-and-white bedroom was a shrine to Arsenal Football Club, her walls adorned with posters of Thierry Henry (as well as AB de Villiers – a nod to her South African heritage). She was an excellent footballer and Gaelic footballer, both of which loomed large in her life until cricket ultimately took over. Looking back, she is in no doubt her experiences playing all sports with and against boys made her a better player.

"I'm 100 per cent sure of it," she says. "Just my competitiveness, and having no room to hide, really, amongst the boys.

"Sometimes in football, you'd turn up and they either wouldn't want to go near you, or they would try to kick the legs off you. But you just had to get stuck in."

An international at age 14, Garth thinks back to those formative Ireland years and just how raw she was as a player. "I was a bits-and-pieces cricketer for a long time," she says. "Batted seven, didn't really bowl."

In a small cricket nation though, opportunities abounded. A week after her 15th birthday, for instance, circumstance meant she took the 'keeping gloves through a WODI series in Colombo. In the second match, her five catches equalled the world record for most in an innings. It still stands today.

Anne-Marie believes those early experiences proved the making of Kim's character.

"She was so young," she says. "First tour for Ireland to South Africa, she was 14; 15 to Bangladesh. And you know what? I think it's all made her the person she is. She was so worldly-wise from a young age. So self-sufficient and so independent. She has all the skills to get through anything, I think."

* * *

It is 10 years this month since Garth first crossed paths with a number of the women she now calls teammates. The Australians were in Dublin as part of their 2015 Ashes tour. The reigning ODI and T20 world champs had just accounted for England in the 50-over and Test legs of their multi-format showdown, and three T20s against Ireland were wedged in before the final stage of the Ashes.

None of which mattered to Garth. The 19-year-old was simply relishing an opportunity to play against the world's best. In the first game, she ran out Ellyse Perry, claimed a respectable 0-19 from four overs and made 15 from No.8 in an already lost cause.

But it was the second match in which she turned heads. After Australia won the toss, Garth went to work with the new ball, removing the visitors' top three – Jess Jonassen, Elyse Villani, and Alyssa Healy – to leave them reeling at 3-27. Ireland lost the match, and with it, the series, but you can be sure Garth remembers every detail of her performance.

"Course I do," she laughs. "Three wickets in the Powerplay – probably my best game for Ireland."

Which is about as close as she comes to showing satisfaction with her work. Like a number of her national teammates, Garth is a notoriously hard marker of herself, a trait she feels can cut both ways.

"It's part of what makes you really successful," she says. "It's not totally healthy, but if you always think you're not doing as well as you are, then you're always looking to improve, so I think it does make you better in a way.

"I do find it really easy to criticise myself, and not very easy to say, 'Hey, you've done pretty well'. I'm 29 and I'm still figuring that out a bit. Like, I love playing cricket – I love playing for this team, it's so cool – but at the same time, sometimes I go out and I get so super nervous, and you just put so much pressure on yourself that it becomes a bit unenjoyable.

"Sometimes you kind of forget, like: Hang on a minute – no matter how you go this game, it actually doesn't matter because you've played for Australia, you've done everything you could ever have wanted to do, and anything from here is a bonus.

"I'm getting better at taking a step back and thinking that way, but yeah, there's still certainly times…"

That feeling still exists because Garth is still striving. She is the ICC's fifth ranked WODI bowler, and has been the world's most economical quick in the format since her Australia debut in January 2023 – going at a stunning 3.58 runs per over. National team vice-captain Tahlia McGrath calls her "a nightmare to face". But as this World Cup arrives, Garth insists she is "always looking over my shoulder", wary of the depth of talent in Australian cricket.

And so she hasn't been sitting idle. Driven by the same passion and fire that fuelled her as a young teen, Garth continues to push herself. Healy, nowadays her skipper, has been watching on admiringly, both in training sessions at the National Cricket Centre and in the recently completed Australia A v India A series in Queensland.

"I think she's getting even better," she says. "She's worked on some stuff to make it more challenging (to face her), which, from personal experience, it's hard enough as it is. So to challenge both sides of the bat, it's going to be a really exciting thing to see from her."

Healy has zeroed in on Garth's next trick. Because her natural action – from feet alignment through to wrist position – is predisposed towards outswing, that has become her chief weapon. Now however, conscious of predictability, she has resolved to add a couple of arrows to the quiver.

"My natural variation hits the seam and goes back in," she explains, "and I don't really know when that's going to happen. That's great, but I (want) to have a bit more control over that."

Working with Australia pace-bowling coach Scott Prestwidge, Garth has been experimenting with different seam positions – including the en vogue wobble seam – while also eyeing what she describes as "the ultimate goal": the inswinger. She watches on admiringly as her teammate Megan Schutt executes in the nets, though she has also been studying the delivery via a different medium.

"It's a bit old school," she adds, "but I love watching videos of all different bowlers."

In analysing the inswinger, Garth's video sessions have been focused on Jimmy Anderson. She has been marvelling at the way the Englishman's action remains the same regardless of which way he is swinging the ball. Now she wants to get there herself. In practice right now, her attempted inswingers are being delivered with a change in her action around point of delivery; a dead giveaway for eagle-eyed batters. During Australia A's matches against India A in August, she experimented further, though it remains a work in progress.

"I'm trying to be a bit more subtle with it," she says. "To be fair, I haven't quite cracked it yet. I'm hoping it'll come this summer."

Not that she sees it as her pathway into a T20I side she has been unable to consistently make. Since her Australia debut in that format in December 2022, Garth has played only 10 of 42 matches (versus 22 of 27 ODIs). Part of that has been about team structure – with Annabel Sutherland, as well as McGrath and Ellyse Perry – all capable right-arm seamers in the middle order, Garth has been deemed expendable, and an extra spinner often preferred. Swing queen Megan Schutt (39 of 42 matches) has been elite both up front and at the death, while the pace of Darcie Brown (27 matches) has also been regularly employed.

Presented a challenge that appeals to her, it seems Garth will not rest until it is achieved. A starting place in Australia's best T20 XI is firmly in that basket.

"Obviously, my strength lies with the new ball," she says. "But now I feel like I can bowl very well through the middle (overs) as well, and I'm trying to work on the death stuff; I feel like that's probably the key to it, is improving my skills and being a three-phase bowler. I think that will make me a bit more difficult to leave out."

Come October, it will be 15 years since Garth's T20I debut, which is to say she has been overcoming these kinds of hurdles for more than half her life. She also knows she is exactly where she needs to be.

"It's almost difficult not to get better in this group, just with everyone working collectively," she says of the Australia set-up. "I've probably improved as much in the past two years in this squad as I have in my whole career."

It is a group she has slotted seamlessly into culturally as well. For cricket fans, it is perhaps an undervalued element of the game. But within a close-knit group that spends months at a time together on the road, it is important. McGrath and Healy both pointed to Garth's sense of humour, her comfort in her own skin, and an enthusiasm about forming deep connections with her teammates, as aligning neatly with the squad's values.

"For her to come into an environment and really dive into all that, it makes a real difference," Healy says. "And she's just a really enjoyable person to be around, which enables that good culture to thrive."

And as she looks towards a world title defence in India, the captain knows very well the upside of having a genuine new-ball wicket-taker at her disposal. Particularly one who – quite remarkably given the length of her international career – might just be arriving at her peak.

"I think the sky's the limit for her," Healy adds. "Hopefully she gets that confidence through this little period and heads into an ODI World Cup where she can dominate.

"If she truly believes in her own ability and what she can achieve, I don't think there's too much stopping her."

* * *

"When that Big Bash rookie program and the whole thing started, I knew it was the country for her," says Anne-Marie. "She's so sporty. I said, 'This is the beginning of the end – I know it is'. And it was."

The story of Kim Garth's slow-burn move abroad in pursuit of a professional cricket career has been well-documented: from her introduction to Australia via the Big Bash Associate rookie program in 2015-16, through to some grade cricket experience with Dandenong in Melbourne Premier Cricket (2017 onwards), to taking the plunge to quit Ireland Cricket and move permanently after landing a contract with Victoria in early 2020, right on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The timing meant Garth didn't see her family for two-and-a-half years – a situation she cites as the most challenging of her life. On the other side of the equator, back in her home suburb of Blackrock, Anne-Marie was hurting too. She was only a couple of years older than Kim when she took the same flight to Australia all those years ago, but hers was a return ticket.

"It's horrendous," she says plainly of having her only daughter living so far away. "I am so proud of her, but it is extremely difficult, I have to say. I really miss her.

"Kim is not a girl who rings her mum every day – she's not, like, super-duper chatty."

Which isn't to say communication is rare. In fact, it's quite the opposite. But as much as they seek to make it work, via phone calls and a family WhatsApp group and the like, the reality of time zones and geography is tough. If there's no pressing news, or the Blackrock gossip has already been dissected, Kim loves listening to Anne-Marie talk golf. Her mum is mad for the sport, and will happily "bore Kim to death" as she offers the blow-by-blow account of 18 holes. At other times there will just be photos of Josh, the family's beloved border collie cross English springer spaniel.

"Mum will be like, 'You never contribute to the WhatsApp group'," Kim says, rolling her eyes and grinning. "But I'll wake up to 15 messages, like: 'Am at shops. Do you want bread rolls?' (laughs). I'm in Australia, what do you want me to say? Or she'll put something in the chat and 12 hours later I'll see it, and the moment's passed, but I still get in trouble for not contributing as much as I probably should."

Anne-Marie misses those opportunities to turn to Kim and say something on a whim. She misses just having her daughter around.

"And when she does come home, it is so good, and she really enjoys it too – seeing the family, the grannies (her two grandmothers).

"I bring her up to the golf club, and all my friends love to play with her as well. Mind you, I can barely bring her out – she's so temperamental on a golf course; I said to her, 'Kim, you're not fit for human consumption'. Seriously, she's unbearable."

As welcome as it is, the time at home is a double-edged sword for Garth. With her life now firmly in Australia, and her cricketing aspirations never far from her thoughts, it is hard to escape the feeling of a ticking clock.

"It doesn't get any easier," she says. "Every time I go home, it's unbelievable – I love going home. Love spending time at home. But in the back of your mind, there's always (the thought): I gotta leave in two weeks, and I gotta say bye to everyone again."

The tears flow freely every time. And there's another ticking clock Anne-Marie hears, nagging away at her each time her daughter farewells the family.

"It's really hard," she says. "My mother is 93, and Johnny's mother is 90. (In May) we went down to the nannas' numerous times, and I'm always thinking: Oh my God, this could be the last time."

* * *

Garth says she isn't big on pinch-me moments but then backtracks on that when she realises her past few years have been punctuated by them.

One was calling her parents in the middle of the night because she couldn't wait a moment longer to tell them she had been named in an Australian squad for the first time.

"Naturally, as parents, you get that call (at that time) and you just hope nothing's wrong," Johnny says. "But she's crying down the other end, and I thought, 'Oh God' … but it was tears of joy. Then Anne-Marie and I just got up and had a cup of tea – we weren't going to get back to sleep after that."

Another came on January 12 of this year, as Advance Australia Fair played at North Sydney Oval and Garth stood alongside her teammates, proudly belting out her adopted country's anthem.

"I'd never seen North Sydney so busy – there was just this really cool buzz around," she says. "And I remember thinking: Oh my God, this is so cool. Like, I grew up watching the Ashes, I'm playing for Australia in the Ashes, and honestly, like, genuine, I just had this surge of emotion. And I'm not a very emotional person, but I was almost in tears, and I'm like, 'What the f--k Kim – pull yourself together, you have to bowl the next over. Snap out of it'. And I bowled the worst first over ever. It was horrific."

The Australians returned to Dublin at the end of their 2023 Ashes tour. This time, instead of facing them, Garth was with them. And this time, instead of meeting them on the field, she was hosting them for dinner at the Garth family home. Well, a handful of them at least, along with Anne-Marie, Johnny, and one of the grannies.

Where once Perry had been a revered opponent, here was the Australian superstar, just hanging out in the house in which Garth grew up.

"That was really cool," she smiles. "We had five or six of the girls around, and my granny still talks about it. It was really nice to be able to do that.

"But it was a pity, I was so excited to show the girls some cool spots around Dublin, but of course it literally rained non-stop for 10 days. I was like, 'I promise it's not always like this'."

Many of the faces there that night – Sutherland, Georgia Wareham, Tess Flintoff – are now close links to Garth's new home in Melbourne. It is of course a world away from Blackrock, the little coastal village overlooking the Irish Sea that was her universe as a kid.

But Garth sees similarities. She has bought a house in Mordialloc, south-east of the city on Port Phillip Bay. Her partner, James, is Australian, and she concedes the chances are good it is where she will end up long term.

She knows she wants to stay in sport after her playing days, be it in coaching or by putting her degree in sports management to good use. She sees too, the local sports scene, and wants in.

"I just love the community, the kind of suburban feel that comes with living there," she says. "I'd love to get involved with a local footy club or something like that."

It isn't difficult to see that the future Garth is writing is a recreation of her happy past at Sandymount. She draws the parallel herself. Those days were magical ones, and perhaps a little piece of Pembroke, reimagined in Melbourne park footy, will help her bridge the vast distance between her new home and her old one.

Johnny Garth spent a fortnight at his daughter's new house during last summer's Ashes, though Anne-Marie only saw the home very briefly, en route to the airport a year or so earlier, when it had just been purchased.

"Kim is desperate for me to come in and put the finishing touches on the house," she says. "So I absolutely have to come over in the next six months, or year."

During that January stay in Mordialloc, Johnny made his way to the MCG to watch Kim play in the inaugural day-night Ashes Test. As he entered the lauded venue, he looked over to his left, and took in the much quainter setting of Punt Road Oval, just a couple of hundred metres through the trees and meandering footpaths of Yarra Park. Some 36 years earlier, it was where Anne-Marie played her final match of that 1988 World Cup. There were far fewer people watching, and far less of a hullabaloo was made, but for Anne-Marie and her teammates, it was every bit as exciting and historic as a pink-ball Test.

Maybe the road Garth has taken to Melbourne winds all the way back around to Melbourne. Maybe the wheels of her destiny were set in motion during that summer of '88. More than anyone, it is Anne-Marie who struggles with her daughter's absence. But it seems, in her heart of hearts, there is a motherly understanding, and a sense of pride that the journey she started continues.

"It's hard," she says again. "But when I see her on the international stage, playing for the best team in the world, I can suck it up a bit."